I'm ill - again!

I thought I'd fully recovered from my throat infection earlier on but no! For no reason at all, my throat started acting up last night and started feeling scratchy again. I felt ok this morning but by the afternoon, my throat became really bad and I started to have a mild fever. And I'm still having one now as I type. I feel so worried that Alicia would catch my germs. I've been putting off her 18-mth booster jab due to my illness and was just about to make arrangements to have her jabbed this week... but I had to fall ill again. This is absolutely irritating. Most importantly, I hope she doesn't catch my germs... to think I was still feeling so relieved she didn't catch the earlier strain... sigh. :( It's back to the doc tomorrow morning again...

Braised pork ribs in hoisin sauce

A tasty dish that goes really well with a bowl of rice, or porridge. Yum! Need I say more?


Braised pork ribs in hoisin sauce

Ingredients:

• about 1/2kg pork ribs
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• cornflour
• water

Seasoning for marinating pork ribs:

• about 3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• about 1.5 tablespoon oyster sauce
• sesame oil
• sugar
• ginger juice
• hua diao jiu

Method:

1. Wash the pork ribs clean and remove any visible fats.
2. Marinate the pork ribs with the seasoning for at least 3 hours. As usual, I do this the night before.
3. Heat oil in a wok and fry garlic till fragrant.
4. Add the pork ribs and fry for awhile till the surface of the pork is slightly browned.
5. Add water (enough to cover the pork ribs) and bring the water to a boil.
6. Turn down the heat and simmer for 45min or until pork ribs are cooked.
7. Thicken the gravy with cornflour solution.
8. Serve hot.

Preserved radish omelette

This is one of the really classic simple Chinese dishes. As a Teochew (or at least half a Teochew), I have grown up eating fried egg with preserved radish as one of the regular dishes that accompany a bowl of piping hot porridge. And I've always enjoyed it. In fact, I could eat my whole bowl of porridge with just this dish!

Yesterday I ran out of ideas what to cook for dinner and so I decided to go back to basics and just cook something simple. Anyway, hubby has been trying to order this dish from the economical rice stall downstairs so I thought, well, why not just cook it for him? It's so simple and convenient (though not that healthy an option)... I guess it won't hurt to eat it just once in a while right? :)

This time, instead of scrambling the egg, I decided to make it an omelette.


Preserved radish omelette

Ingredients:

• a small handful of preserved radish (chai por)
• 3 small eggs (beaten)

Method:

1. Rinse the preserved radish a few times - till it's not too salty. If it's really salty, you may have to soak it for awhile.
2. Heat the pan (if yours is a non-stick pan, you don't even need oil).
3. Pour in the beaten eggs and swirl the egg in the pan so that there is even distribution of egg.
4. Sprinkle the preserved radish as evenly as you can in the pan.
5. Once the egg is cooked, turn it over and cook the other side.
6. Done!

Off to School!

I was dressing Alicia up for JG class this morning and after I put on her school T-shirt and her jeans for her, she decided that she wanted to wear her shades. So I put it on for her and I thought that her little duck backpack would make her look really extra adorable so I made her carry it (well, just around the house). She looked so cute that I just had to take a photo of her but she was really upset that I put her down (I was carrying her) and so she started crying and throwing tantrums. You can see even her tears in the photos! :D

How glum she looks! But cute, nevertheless!

Onion and Broccoli stock

This is the latest stock for Alicia's porridge. I felt that she didn't quite like the cabbage stock (although there wasn't any outright rejection) so I decided to boil something else this time - hopefully she likes it. With nothing much on hand, I worked with what was in the pantry: two yellow onions with two broccoli stems which I had kept to throw in together with the next batch of stock - of coz all these to be boiled together with the usual stock base of chicken bones/ carcass and pork ribs.

Onion and Broccoli Stock

Ingredients:

• 2 big yellow onions (peeled and sliced)
• 2 broccoli stems (remove any blemishes and just trim the bottom)
• 1 chicken carcass
• 250g pork ribs
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 soup pot water

Method:

1. Blanch pork ribs and chicken carcass.
2. Bring the pork ribs, chicken carcass and garlic to a boil in a soup pot of water.
3. When the water comes to a boil, put in the yellow onions and broccoli stems.
4. Simmer for a few hours.
5. Sieve the stock and pack into small portions for freezing.

JG PlayClub (23/1)

I accompanied Alicia into class today and she was such a good gal! She was so attentive and didn't move much and she even enjoyed the activities and sat still during story time. We were duly impressed and so were the teachers! :D Hubby and I were wondering what made her so different in class today compared to the past two weeks and we both came to the conclusion: I accompanied her today instead of my hubby. Whenever she started to get distracted and wanted to go walk around, I'd pull her back and seat her nicely on my lap - and she'd stay still and concentrate on the given task/ activity without (much) protest. When hubby did the exact same thing to her for the past two lessons (and in the later part of the session today), she refused to sit down. Kinda strange since he's the disciplinarian at home. When we swapped over and he accompanied her for the session after outdoor playtime, she displayed a shockingly different behaviour - she started her nonsense of walking around class again - so we sorta concluded that she probably associates learning with me and therefore is more willing to sit down and listen when she's with me. Actually I noticed this already last year when she attended PlayNest. She was attentive for all the days that I went in with her and the only day that hubby could attend with her, she displayed that same distracted behaviour.

Anyway, fortunately art wasn't too m-e-s-s-y today and we spent some time concentrating on developing fine motor skills too while we were at it. Here's Alicia's work for the day and she enjoyed threading too (so I allowed her to thread through whichever hole that she fancied):

Snack time wasn't too appealing to Alicia today coz they served up raisin bread and cheese cubes - which she doesn't like. So the only thing she ate today was a cube of watermelon and a bit of juice before going off to play at the playground. Boy was she overjoyed to be out and about! There was an improvement in behaviour today though: she didn't kick up a fuss when it was time to leave the playground and go back into class!